Inside a Libyan Hospital, Proof of a Revolt’s Costs

A man stood over a relative who had been shot by a pro-Qaddafi sniper in Tripoli on Thursday.Credit
Moises Saman for The New York Times

TRIPOLI, Libya — Word raced through Tripoli Central Hospital as fast as the bloody gurneys rushing through the entrance on Thursday carrying wounded fighters from the front: perhaps this was Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi’s last stand.

The hospital’s doctors — soldiers of another sort in their own underground resistance to Colonel Qaddafi during the six-month revolt — knew the battle would not be easy, whether or not the colonel had been located. By virtue of their work receiving the dead and the wounded, they have developed a special perspective on the rebels’ blitz of Tripoli this week and the continuing toll of the fighting.

Their morgue was already overflowing, with more than 115 bodies of fighters and civilians still unclaimed. Two doctors said the hospital had treated as many as 500 patients a day this week for gunshot wounds as the rebels struggled to overcome the Qaddafi loyalists who stubbornly continued to fight.

“I haven’t left in six days,” said Dr. Nabil Bay. “Qaddafi controlled the hospital on Saturday and Sunday, and the rebels took over Monday, and every day we are overwhelmed with patients.”

Of the six days since the revolt reached Tripoli, the capital, Thursday may have been the bloodiest. Doctors and journalists reported evidence of fresh massacres by both sides around the city, while the battle to establish full control of Colonel Qaddafi’s breached compound, Bab al-Aziziya, raged on.

In their drive to take command of Tripoli, the rebels concentrated their forces on a block-by-block battle for the streets of the Abu Salim neighborhood, a center of Colonel Qaddafi’s support. By late afternoon, the fighting had once again swamped Tripoli Central Hospital with wounded civilians and combatants.

Photo

The dead and wounded, including a fighter loyal to Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi, above, filled hospitals Thursday in Tripoli, Libya, as rebels struggled to keep control.Credit
Tyler Hicks/The New York Times

From his hiding place, Colonel Qaddafi taunted the rebels with a speech carried over loyalist radio channels urging Libyans to cleanse Tripoli of the “rats, crusaders and unbelievers” — his favorite terms for the rebels and their Western allies. Deprived of state television, Colonel Qaddafi has turned to the radio at least twice this week to remind the world that he has not given up.

His government spokesman, Moussa Ibrahim, apparently also in hiding, told The Associated Press in a telephone interview that Colonel Qaddafi was still in command of his forces and was capable of withstanding any rebel onslaught for “weeks, months and years.”

Colonel Qaddafi’s loyalists delivered the same message by waging an intense gunfight outside the Corinthia Hotel here, where many journalists have taken up residence — and where the rebels’ governing body, the Transitional National Council, is expected to settle as well.

Intensifying their quest to find Colonel Qaddafi and his sons, rebel leaders said their forces had attacked Sabha, a town in the south that is a stronghold of the Qaddafis’ tribe. And Britain’s defense secretary, Liam Fox, said Thursday that NATO was trying to help, apparently deviating from NATO’s nominal mission to protect civilians. “I can confirm that NATO is providing intelligence and reconnaissance assets” to the insurgents “to help them track down Colonel Qaddafi and other remnants of the regime,” Mr. Fox told Sky News.

In a sign of the rebels’ growing confidence, cabinet members of the Transitional National Council appeared at a news conference in Tripoli on Thursday to announce that they were formally moving their operations from the eastern city of Benghazi to Tripoli.

During an emotional address, the oil and finance minister, Ali Tarhouni, praised the rebel fighters, asked police officers to get back to work and called on Qaddafi loyalists to put down their arms and go home.

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The news at Tripoli's hospitals was grim on Thursday as the morgues overflowed with victims of gunfire and massacres. “I haven't left in six days,” one doctor said at a hospital on Thursday.Credit
Tyler Hicks/The New York Times

“There will not be any revenge,” he said. “The law will be between us.”

But that pledge may already have been violated. Reuters reported the discovery of the bullet-ridden bodies of more than 30 pro-Qaddafi fighters in a military encampment in Tripoli. At least two had been bound with plastic handcuffs, five were in a field hospital at the camp and one was still strapped to a gurney with an intravenous drip in his arm.

Among the hundreds of bodies in the Tripoli Central Hospital morgue — some in wall drawers, but many lying on the floor barely covered — at least one was bound at the hands, although it was unclear which side he fought for or whether he had been wounded before he was bound.

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Doctors at another hospital in Tripoli said they had received the bodies of 17 men who witnesses said were executed by Colonel Qaddafi’s soldiers as rebels stormed the leader’s compound, Bab al-Aziziya, on Tuesday. The men, held in a makeshift detention near the compound, had been shot in the upper body, neck and chest, doctors at Mitiga Hospital said.

Outside the emergency room, rebels brought in at least two of Colonel Qaddafi’s soldiers wounded in the battle for the Abu Salim neighborhood, evidence of the closeness and intensity of the combat there.

Inside, doctors described their distinctive perspective on the revolution. Dr. Essam Ben Masoud, 34, said that when the first protests broke out in February, doctors at the hospital called human rights activists and journalists abroad to report the death toll from Colonel Qaddafi’s crackdown. Soldiers, he said, roamed the hospitals, dragging out patients who had been shot in the protests. Many were never seen again.

The Qaddafi government went into the hospitals and removed the televisions on which the doctors and others had furtively watched the independent news channel Al Jazeera. Closed-circuit television cameras appeared everywhere. Soldiers stationed in the hospital intimidated the doctors, threatening them with weapons and even hitting them, Dr. Masoud and others said.

Video

TimesCast | Fighting for Tripoli

August 25, 2011 - It was one of the heaviest days of fighting in Libya's capital, as rebels and loyalists to Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi's regime continue to fight for control.

Dr. Masoud said he kept working surreptitiously for the rebels. In preparation for the final uprising, he said, he and other doctors from Tripoli Central Hospital helped set up 15 makeshift field hospitals of a network of 30 in homes around Green Square, where they treated wounded rebels last weekend. That way they could avoid sending patients to Qaddafi-controlled hospitals and could ship those needing serious care out of town. “The rebels can’t come here or the Qaddafi people would shoot them,” Dr. Masoud said.

For the first two days of the Tripoli fighting, Tripoli Central Hospital treated soldiers all but exclusively, several doctors said. “We have seven operating rooms, and they were all busy from 9 p.m. to 2 p.m. the next day,” Dr. Masoud said.

About 30 people died at the hospital on Sunday, one doctor said, and the hospital had run out of basic supplies like antibiotics. The doctors slept, as they have since then, on eight bunk beds without sheets in a narrow hall with a puddle on the tile floor from a leak in the ceiling.

Then everything changed. At about 4 a.m. Monday, Colonel Qaddafi’s soldiers abruptly fled, prompting cheers and even songs from the doctors.

The next day, after a television announcement, volunteers flooded in to help with cleaning, cooking and other chores, two doctors said. Pharmacists and medical supply companies donated drugs and equipment. Dr. Bay, who also owns a pharmacy, donated antibiotics.

By then, bodies had already begun to pile up at the morgue. On Tuesday, when rebels stormed Bab al-Aziziya, the flow of patients surged, and as many as 40 died at the hospital or arrived dead, doctors said, all of them rebels. The next day “we found a refrigerator truck — like a refrigerator for transporting cheese — with 28 dead bodies in it,” Dr. Masoud said, suggesting that the Qaddafi forces had killed people in the street and hid the bodies.

On Thursday, as bodies began to pile up again from the fighting in Abu Salim, rebels returning from the front said they were surprised by the depth of the loyalists’ resistance. But by nightfall, the flood of patients began to slow, said Dr. Bay, chasing after a gurney. “Abu Salim is over now,” he said, optimistically.

Rick Gladstone contributed reporting from New York.

A version of this article appears in print on August 26, 2011, on Page A1 of the New York edition with the headline: Inside a Libyan Hospital, Proof of a Revolt’s Costs. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe